Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

telegraph.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 936 posts

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#101

Post by librasteve »

UncleMeat wrote: post #81
steve1977 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO Mark Zuckerberg is a textbook case of someone who got lucky once by basically being in the right place at the right time, but who attributes his success to his skill. There’s probably a proper term for this.

I think that meta is bad for the world and that zuck has made a lot of huge mistakes but calling him a one hit wonder doesn't sit right with me. Facebook made the transition to mobile faster than other competitors and successfully kept G+ from becoming competition. The instagram purchase felt insane at the time ($1b to share photos) but facebook was able to convert it into a moneymaking juggernaut in time for the fla…

Whatsapp was also an inspired move

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#102

Post by stogot »

UncleMeat wrote: post #81
steve1977 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO Mark Zuckerberg is a textbook case of someone who got lucky once by basically being in the right place at the right time, but who attributes his success to his skill. There’s probably a proper term for this.

I think that meta is bad for the world and that zuck has made a lot of huge mistakes but calling him a one hit wonder doesn't sit right with me. Facebook made the transition to mobile faster than other competitors and successfully kept G+ from becoming competition. The instagram purchase felt insane at the time ($1b to share photos) but facebook was able to convert it into a moneymaking juggernaut in time for the fla…

Buying competitors is not insane or a weird business practice. He was probably advised to do so by the competent people under him

And what did he do to keep G+ from becoming a valid competitor? It killed itself. I signed up but there was no network effect and it kind of sucked. Google had a way of shutting down all their product attempts too

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#103

Post by fartfeatures »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #18
roxolotl wrote: post #2

Maybe this time investors will realize how incompetent these leaders are? How do you go from 250mil contracts to freezes in under a month?

I really don't understand this massive flip flopping. Do I have this timeline correct? * January, announce massive $65B AI spend * June, buy Scale AI for ~$15B, massive AI hiring spree, reportedly paying millions per year for low-level AI devs * July, announce some of the biggest data centers ever that will cost billions and use all of Ohio's water (hyperbolic) * Aug, freeze, it's a bubble! Someone please tell me I'v…

Maybe they are poisoning the well to slow their competitors? Get the funding you need secured for the data centers and the hiring, hire everyone you need and then put out signals that there is another AI winter.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#104

Post by Esophagus4 »

rs186 wrote: post #83
arcticbull wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's really not. Facebook is an extremely well run organization. There's a lot to dislike about working there, and there's a lot to dislike about what they do, but you cannot deny they have been unbelievably successful at it. He really is good at his job, and part of that has been making bold bets and aggressively cutting unsuccessful bets.

hmm... Oculus Quest something something.

I can’t tell if you’re being tongue in cheek or not, so I’ll respond as if you mean this.

It’s easy to cherry pick a few bets that flopped for every mega tech company: Amazon has them, Google has them, remember Windows Phone? etc.

I see the failures as a feature, not a bug - the guy is one of the only founder CEOs to have ever built a $2T company (trillion with a T). I imagine part of that is being willing to make big bets.

And it also seems like no individual product failure has endangered their company’s footing at all.

While I’m not a Meta or Zuck fan myself, using a relatively small product flop as an indication a $2T tech mega corp isn’t well run seems… either myopic or disingenuous.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#105

Post by _heimdall »

nijave wrote: post #63
ekianjo wrote: post #28

> Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has compared hype around AI to the dotcom bubble at the turn of the century Sam is the main one driving the hype, that's rich...

Facebook, Twitter, and some others made it out of the social media bubble. Some "gig" apps survived the gig bubble. Some crypto apps survived peak crypto hype Not everyone has to lose which he's presumably banking on

Right, he's hoping to be Amazon rather than Pets.com in the sitcom bubble analogy.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#106

Post by ojr »

jaccola wrote: post #69
ojr wrote: post #24

I just did a phone screen with Meta, and the interviewer asked for Euclidean distance between two points; they definitely have some nerds in the building.

People saying it is a high school maths problem! I'd like to see you provide a general method for accurately measuring the distance between two arbitrary points in space...

Using a heap in 10 minutes, the Euclidean distance formula was given and had to be used in the answer; maybe they thought that was the question?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#107

Post by apwell23 »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #99
abxyz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bubble narrative is coming from the outside. More likely is that the /acquisition/ of Scale has led to an abundance of talent that is being underutilised. If you give managers the option to hire, they will. Freezing hiring while reorganising is a sane strategy regardless of how well you are or are not doing.

This. TFA says this explicitly. Alexander Wang, the former Scale CEO is to approve any new hires. They're taking stock of internal staff + new acquisitions and how to rationalize before further steps. Now, I think AI investments are still a bubble, but that's not why FB is freezing hiring.

> They're taking stock of internal staff + new acquisitions and how to rationalize before further steps.

Like a toddler collecting random toys in a pile and then deciding what to do with them.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#108

Post by cedws »

ekianjo wrote: post #28

> Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has compared hype around AI to the dotcom bubble at the turn of the century Sam is the main one driving the hype, that's rich...

Now that you mention it, there's been a very sudden tone shift from both Altman and Zuckerberg. What's going on?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#109

Post by FrustratedMonky »

roxolotl wrote: post #17
baq wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By signing too many 250mil contracts.

Well that’s the incompetent piece. Setting out to write giant historical employment contracts without a plan is not something competent people do. And seemingly it’s not that they over extended a bit either since reports claimed the time availability of the contracts was extremely limited; under 30min in some cases.

Yes.

Perhaps it was this: Lets hit the market fast, scoop up all the talent we can before anybody can react, then stop.

I don't think there is anybody that would expect they would 'continue' offering 250million packages. They would need to stop eventually. They just did it fast, all at once, and now stopped.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

#110

Post by apwell23 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #88
steve1977 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO Mark Zuckerberg is a textbook case of someone who got lucky once by basically being in the right place at the right time, but who attributes his success to his skill. There’s probably a proper term for this.

> IMHO Mark Zuckerberg is a textbook case of someone who got lucky once by basically being in the right place at the right time, but who attributes his success to his skill. It is no secret that the person who turned Facebook into a money-printing machine is/was Sheryl Sandberg. Thus, the evidence is clear that Mark Zuckerberg had the right idea at the right time (the question is whether this was because of his skill…

it wasn't sheryl
Post reply on HN